The College Board recently released new SAT data for 2013-2014 and for Delaware it doesn’t look any better than last year. On the positive side Delaware is no longer 51st in SAT scores and 16th out of 16 “High Participation Rate” states and D.C. (70% or greater participation). The state moved to 50th this year and 15th out of 16, surpassing Washington D.C. in both categories.

Total average SAT scores, class of 2013-2014:

Critical reading: 456

writing: 444

math: 459

Total: 1359

For college-bound seniors the numbers improve slightly:

Critical reading: 497

writing: 487

math: 513

Total: 1497

The number best estimated to predict success at the college level is a total score of 1550 for the entire SAT. Delaware scores nearly 190 points below average. 26 out of 51 states and D.C. reach this 1550 threshold. The CATO Institute studied Delaware and factored in the mandatory SAT testing, and even weighted we are still near the bottom. Even when factoring in only high school seniors who attended any college institution this year, the average scores were still below 1550.

Another interesting note: for college-bound seniors, writing scores dropped 10 points from 2006 for both boys and girls, and both boys and girls score 32-34 points lower respectively in reading than in 1972. Math was up 4 points combined since 1972, with girls making slightly bigger gains.

Excluding the writing section, in 1972 the average college-bound high school senior in Delaware earned a 1039 on their SAT’s, while the class of 2014 had a mean of 1010. Meaning, we’ve DROPPED in proficiency, particularly in reading, from the 1970s. Remember, these are seniors who went to college this year. We aren’t counting those who didn’t go.

The only real way we can move forward is to agree that only a robust range of education options for children will allow children to learn as best they can. A one-size-fits-all public school model does little to understand that some students do better in bigger classrooms, others smaller. Some students may do better with the parent as a teacher and for others cyber school may be a better choice. Even among charter and magnet schools there are diverse options, such as the First State Military Academy set to open in Clayton later this year, which is a Junior ROTC program charter school for which some students will benefit from more than others who enter. For some kids and parents issues like safety, school hours, or programs will determine the best options.

The point is we want a system which allows parents or the children’s legal guardians to choose the place best suited for the kids. There is absolutely no reason a child’s fate should be determined by their zip code or that a child should attend a school which either a) is not serving them properly, or b) is not suited to the child’s best method of learning, simply to appease those whose primary interest is keeping the system as-is.

It’s time we made education options available for all children. Visit our website www.caesarrodney.org and sign up for our e-mail newsletters. See what you can do today to make tomorrow’s education a better experience for all children.

2015 will soon be upon us and for those who are passionate defenders of freedom and liberty our work just goes on when the clock strikes midnight. Here is CRI in review and our goals for 2015:

Dave Stevenson’s lawsuit against DNREC and former DNREC Secretary Collin O’Mara is still ongoing. Dave and the other three plaintiffs, including CRI Director John Moore, won standing to continue their lawsuit. We will refrain from making a prediction on a court ruling less we jinx the lawsuit but we are optimistic the Plaintiffs will win. This is because in order to get standing the Plaintiffs had to prove they had a valid reason to sue in the first place, such as being aggrieved by the Defendants actions. Winning means stopping DNREC from changing the rules on how many carbon permits can be sold at carbon auctions, saving Delaware taxpayers over $100 million a year in increases in utility bills.

We testified in favor of HB353, the Parent Empowerment Education Savings Account Act (PEESAA). Jim Hosley, our former CEE Director, spoke in favor as did a dozen Wilmington parents and grandparents (and one student!) and the leaders of Tall Oak Classical Academy. The bill was tabled in the House Education Committee, a move we are unfortunately not surprised by. However, we hope 2015 will be a better year as more and more people realize the need to improve Delaware’s education system, and the only effective way to make the changes our students need to be prepared for the future is to provide parents with school choice options to do what’s best for the child. CRI will always maintain the belief that parents and/or legal guardians can make a better choice about their children’s education than politicians and bureaucrats in the state Department of Education.

We brought in Dr. Bartley Danielsen, business and economics professor from North Carolina State University to keynote our Sixth Annual Dinner. Dr. Danielsen has proposed a theory tying in environmental benefits to school choice. The basic theory is, parents moved to the suburbs to flee poorly performing public schools which left a lot of people uneducated and unable to find respectable work, and many turned to crime as a result. His theory is if inner city schools were to improve their quality, many families would move back to the cities from the suburbs and the result would be a reduction in traffic and environmental pollution from people driving from the suburbs to the cities. View is presentation here and here

In addition to these challenges, we still have issues Delaware must resolve in order to improve our economy:

End to the prevailing wage which makes public construction costs so expensive many end up getting no work at all. See: Rockwood Museum.

A Right to Work law for Delaware. Union leaders are pushing the “scab” theory that somehow union members will drop out and reap all the benefits the union “works” to get. We have responded by noting that a) manufacturing businesses have responded by moving factories elsewhere, depriving Delawareans of job opportunities. See: loss of auto industry, Valero plant, Evraz Steel plant, Georgia Pacific plant. b) as a moral issue, should union bosses have the right to take someone’s money just because someone works at a particular location? What if the union bosses don’t serve their member’s needs, such as organizing or donating to political causes or candidates the members don’t support?

We wrote: “While in the short run unionization may force wages up for those involved, in the long run closed shops reduce capital spending and induce the out-migration of jobs and workers.”

tax reform. Delaware is one of just five states with a gross receipts tax (tax on sales, even before factoring in profit/loss and expenses). Three of the other four don’t have an income tax and the only state with both like Delaware is Virginia who has lower tax rates. Coupled with high corporate and personal income taxes while Nevada and North Dakota compete with us for corporate business, and without reforms we will see money and jobs leave the state at even higher numbers.

Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Happy Holidays, and a Happy New Year to all. Let’s be thankful for a good 2014 and hope for better things in 2015.

Earlier this week Business Insider UK published an article titled, “Conservatives will hate this: Proof That Government Spending Cuts Hurt Economic Growth”. From the article:

“… austerity subtracted about 0.76 percentage points off the real growth rate of the economy between the middle of 2010 and the middle of 2011. If real government spending had remained constant at mid-2010 levels and everything else stayed constant, (yes we know these are big assumptions) the US economy would now be about 1.2 per cent larger.

There’s a secondary conclusion, too: War is good (economically), it turns out.”

They provided a graph (created by Matt Klein of the Financial Times) with data from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) “proving” that Keynesianism works. Without public spending, the author argued, our economy can’t grow.

Enter the Foundation for Economic Freedom, whose founder Leonard Reed once published the famous short story “I, Pencil.” You absolutely should read this, by the way. An economist named Robert Murphy points out the fallacy in the calculations made for the graph above:

“Edwards (the author of the Business Times UK article) seems to think that the above chart shows at least a correlation between government spending and economic growth. After all, he wrote that the BEA chart “seems to show that government has a pretty straightforward effect on GDP.” But… the chart does nothing of the kind.

Look carefully at the legend. The various colored rectangles are different components of government spending. Specifically, the rectangles indicate how the change in each component — positive or negative — relates to the change in overall GDP. The black line is not GDP growth, but is instead the sum of the various components of government spending… if we take the BEA’s word for how much each component of government spending contributed to GDP growth in each quarter, then we can stack those numbers on top of each other and even add them up! Contrary to Edwards, the FT chart doesn’t “show” anything at all, except that the BEA each quarter announces how much various components of government spending contributed to, or subtracted from, GDP growth.

After this discussion, we can see why pretty charts from the FT showcasing government spending’s “contribution to GDP growth” quarter by quarter don’t really mean anything. It’s the same for the ex post “empirical” analyses that concluded that the Obama stimulus package “saved or created” such-and-such million jobs. The underlying models that generate these estimates assume a Keynesian world, and thus cannot test whether the Keynesian model is correct.”

Even though the government prints and issues money, it’s the private sector (both businesses and consumers) who determine the value of a good or service. The government can only run on money taken from the private sector; printing into eternity is Quantitative Easing, which causes inflation if too much is printed. So they tax or borrow it from the people. If government spending really did save economies, both Delaware and America would have people making record amounts of money instead of seeing wages stagnate. The Federal Reserve would not have to continue holding interest rates low in order to convince people to buy things like homes or cars or take out student loans.

At the Hispanic CREO (Council for Reform and Education Options- CREO is Spanish for ‘I believe’) conference December 11-12 the topic of how to approach the issue of school choice was discussed. Here are our top three takeaways and fantastic photos of Miami:

First session had speakers representing four different Hispanic Chambers of Commerce: South Florida, Albuquerque, Illinois, and California. The big takeaway is that Hispanics have got to stop the in-fighting and work together to solve problems. This lesson applies to all groups though Hispanics were the #1 focus of the conference (see the name).

Myles Mendoza is the Executive Director of Ed Choice Illinois, and a member of the Democrat Party. He discussed the challenges Democrats who support school choice have since the issue has become so highly (and unfortunately) politicized. One method he had: focus on the “low-hanging” fruit. Find people of all backgrounds who are willing to accept the truth about Delaware’s public education system and explain to them the merits of supporting school choice. Police officers might find it easier to support it if they realized just how much better schools would improve the local community, like Wilmington or Dover. Then find others who see the benefits of better schools and who realize this isn’t a partisan issue.

The business community MUST become more involved. Too many business owner’s don’t see the benefits of how better schools benefit them because they have never been approached on this issue, or have been approached from a partisan point of view. SUPPORTING QUALITY EDUCATION ALL CHILDREN IS NOT PARTISAN! One way is to ask local businesses to invest in their community’s education. They can either a) get apprentices/interns out of high school to work for them or b) they will benefit when educated people turn into consumers with money to spend at those businesses.

Today is Giving Tuesday, a day created by the UN and 92nd Street Y nonprofit to encourage people to consider giving to a nonprofit/charitable organization instead of buying more stuff for the holidays.

As someone who currently works at a nonprofit, I can’t emphasize enough how critical donations are to keeping the organization running. I know stories abound about nonprofits where the CEO’s and top executives pull in six or seven figure salaries and very little that’s donated goes to the actual mission. That may be true for a small number of larger nonprofits or shady enterprises, but I can assure you the vast majority of us who work in nonprofits are not rolling in money.

So please find a charity (like the Caesar Rodney Institute, hint hint) and make a contribution today. You can also visit smile.amazon.com and choose a nonprofit you want Amazon to contribute to. For every dollar you spend on Amazon they will make a small contribution to your designated nonprofit. It won’t cost you any money and it’s an easy way to give.